{"id":3519,"date":"2012-04-20T11:38:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T17:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2012-04-20T11:38:33","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T17:38:33","slug":"romney-driscoll-at-liberty-u-blurry-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=3519","title":{"rendered":"Romney & Driscoll at Liberty U: Blurry Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a week for Liberty University, “the largest private non-profit university in the nation, the largest university in Virginia, and the largest Christian university in the world . . . with a vision to train Champions for Christ as a world class university.” (About LU<\/a>)<\/em>\u00a0With the April 19th announcement that Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican Presidential\u00a0nominee,\u00a0will speak at this year’s commencement ceremony and,\u00a0the giddy welcome of Mark Driscoll to the Lynchburg, VA campus on April 20th<\/a>, this has been\u00a0a “stellar”<\/em>\u00a0week for the school that Jerry Falwell built. But, with both those announcements, LU continues to blur the lines between a sound (fundamental, if you prefer) Biblical theology and a\u00a0watered-down (downgraded, if you will) cultural Christianity far too enamored with the world of politics and society.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, Governor Romney. I should be clear at the outset that, if Romney is the Republican\u00a0candidate\u00a0opposing President Obama in the fall, I will have\u00a0no choice but to vote for Mr. Romney. I will not like it. It will be painful. But, he is nevertheless 1000x preferrable to the current occupant of the Oval Office, a man who has gone out of his way to\u00a0preserve\u00a0the\u00a0killing of innocent human life in this country (even right up until the moment of birth). For that reason alone (and there are a host of other reasons I could list),\u00a0I could never vote for President Obama.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, I am not particularly thrilled at the prospect of having to vote for a Mormon candidate. Of course, Mr. Romney has every right to run for President and\u00a0religion (or lack thereof) should never disqualify someone from running for office, including the highest office in the land. However, I\u00a0am\u00a0not prevented from taking into consideration a candidate’s moral\/religious views when deciding whom to cast my vote for. That happens all the time in this country. I’m quite certain that there are folks who would never vote for a conservative Christian because of various views that he\/she holds. I do not have a problem\u00a0with that at all. That is the freedom that we enjoy courtesy of the First Amendment.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, when it comes to speakers on\u00a0self-proclaimed Christian campuses, I think that the bar needs to be set higher. In fact, Liberty University claims that they have set higher standards:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Liberty hosts some of the world\u2019s best-known Christian speakers from all walks of life every semester and our vibrant spiritual life programs are based on a solid doctrinal statement that truly sets us apart from other schools.” (About LU<\/a>)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, what LU fails to say in that statement is that they also willingly host some of the world’s best-known non-Christian speakers. For most Southern Baptists and conservative Evangelicals, Mormons would simply not fall into the category of Christian speakers. Neither Glenn Beck <\/a>nor Mitt Romney would qualify as orthodox Christians, at least not by the Biblical standards that have been used at Liberty and elsewhere for the last two thousand years. I’m aware that both Beck and Romney consider themselves Christians, but I highly doubt that Liberty University would, ala Joel Osteen, proclaim Romney (and Beck) a “believer in Christ like me.”<\/em><\/a> If the leadership of Liberty agrees with Joel Osteen’s opinion on this matter, then the university has far greater (and\u00a0graver)\u00a0problems than the Mark Driscoll visit.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess that Liberty sees Romney’s commencement address,\u00a0much like Mark Driscoll’s convocation address and\u00a0Real Marriage\u00a0Conference<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0as great opportunities for their students and, perhaps\u00a0they are. But, by their invitation to\u00a0both\u00a0Gov. Romney and Pastor Driscoll, Liberty\u00a0University\u00a0has further blurred the lines between Biblical Christianity and Cultural Christianity.\u00a0They may not see it. The students at LU may not see it. The ardent defenders of Mark Driscoll may not see it. For, when you only look through one blurry lens and one clear lens, things may not\u00a0appear as blurry as they\u00a0really are, especially if you close\u00a0the eye with the blurry vision. But, if you open both eyes and look through two blurry lens —\u00a0Romney and\u00a0Driscoll — at the same time, you might just get a clear picture of how blurry the vision really is at the “world’s largest Christian University.”<\/em> With vision like that, “training Champions for Christ”<\/em>\u00a0will be a lot\u00a0harder.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a week for Liberty University, “the largest private non-profit university in the nation, the largest university in Virginia, and the largest Christian university in the world . . . with a vision to train Champions for Christ as a world class university.” (About LU)\u00a0With the April 19th announcement that Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,22,1681,34,35],"tags":[3370,1954,1860,383,443,1955,606,1903,3404,667,801,3392,830],"class_list":["post-3519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-government","category-mark-driscoll","category-politics","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-conservative-christianity","tag-evangelicalism","tag-first-amendment","tag-glenn-beck","tag-largest-christian-university","tag-liberty-university","tag-lu","tag-mark-driscoll","tag-mitt-romney","tag-president-obama","tag-religion","tag-republican-presidential-candidates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-UL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3526,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions\/3526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}